Gaming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC Review

It is a 10 year old engine, but that can be deceiveptive. I was running an E6300 with an 8800gts 320mb when playing MW1 on a 22" wide. If I wanted it to look pretty the frame rate was always below 60, closer to the 30 mark. Luckily a friend chucked me his old E8500 and GTX260, so all's well for me.

Problem then is for my sister who's running a pair of HD4350's in "crossfire" (not SLI, sorry. ) attached to her 30". It runs MW1 fine maxed out...providing there are TWO cards. Take one out and it's crippled.

As you say, it's most likely a driver issue. Not their fault per-se, but there should be support for things like that on release. Specially when the engine has been around for 10 years.

 

I'd also like to point you to two interesting things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_37pYlEc74s - Modern Warfare 2 cheat. Remember that if you're playing this guy on a ranked server you cannot kick him. IW's anti-cheat strategy has been announced as "we will ban them", but at the rate counter-strike: source cheaters are cranking out anti-vac cheats there will ALWAYS be a working cheat for MW2.

http://www.infinityward.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=167264 - Link feels a little laggy....JUST LIKE THE GAME. The standard ping bar system is set up to fool you into a false sense of security about your ping. Messing with the config files and changing the bar system from 4x100ms to 9x20ms allows us to see the true nature of MW2's latency.

 

I said core players not core market, difference being one group plays the most, the other sells the most..

whilst catering for the group that sells the most is obviously a great idea, ignoring the wants, needs of the group that will keep interest in the game long term is a bad idea and it was the on-line pc community that gave MW1 it's longevity not to mention any other call of duty games.

 

I agree with others that the review was soft. Yes, some negatives were mentioned, but we too easily forgotten IMHO.

Personally, I would mark the game down (...and wont buy the game...) because it has sold-out the PC community. There appears to be a lot in the game that PC gamers will like. It's fun, if a little linear and rigid. But it strikes me as the best console game yet, but one that can be also emulated on the PC. There is no PC version of this game, as such - all the hallmarks of your typical PC game are missing.

It begs the question whether a review such as this such address such 'political' issues. I'd say yes, but clearly BT think not. If it were me, I'd rate it 9/Excellent for consoles and 7 for PCs.

I was listening to the latest gaming podcast on the train yesterday... enjoying it generally - UNTIL the subject of accessibility was raised. The general consensus that moves that some would argue were dumbing down PC gaming were in actual fact making the games more 'accessible'. I'm sorry, but finding the server I want has never been a problem in any game so far, until I discovered the 'accessible' lobby system in L4D. Besides, like L4D, why not provide both means of finding a game?

Consoles are designed to be accessible, but although they don't need to be elitist as such, PCs are home to a different type of player with different (read: higher) expectations. You can't merge the two markets, and so any game that tries to do so should be judged accordingly.

More importantly, none of the CoD6 changes were made for accessiblilty. Nor were they made to fight piracy. They were made to reduce development costs and lock up the platform so that they can make the same cash from PCs as they do consoles.

My biggest gripe and my biggest fear is that this is only the thin end of the wedge. If we accept the dumbing down, the restrictions and the monetarisation of the CoD franchise, it will be a signal to many other developers that they don't have to maintain the same standards and push so hard with PC games.

 

I think his point is that the PC was the first gaming platform and CoD started on it. This means there are PC users that have been playing from the first ever game and now feel a little cheated.

Console players can never be screwed by developers really and when they are it's quickly forgotted. PC gamers can get shafted, in the publishers eyes, with no repercussions. 7 million console pre-orders and they seem to think they can ignore a market. That's what they're pretty much doing. If you can ignore +200,000 people (that's a lot of protest really...) then you're going to be remembered for it.

I'm sure one day this might come back bite someone in the bum.

I'd also like to add that the PC market usually jumps on a game and keeps it for YEARS. For example, my friend is still playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R., loves it to bits and can't put it down. MW1 is still going strong despite being 2 years old (most console players I know dropped MW1 ages ago to play super mega tek 5 or something) and I can see MW1 lasting a lot longer now that MW2 hasn't met the market standard for pc.

^I'll expand on that point as well. One of the biggest advantages to the PC platform is the multiplayer. In the PC world if a game has good SP and bad MP, it'll be played and dropped pretty sharpish. This is what I fear will happen to MW2. With out basic features that allow it to compete with it's prequel all I can see happening is the PC market sticking with MW1.

This is a shame because you really can make a biggish profit off PC's over a period of time. Think about how long Quake 3 has been running for example, i know players that bought the game 4 - 5 years after release to play it and I still see that happening with MW1. I can't imagine in 2 years time (providing IWNet stays) that an avid new generation PC gamer who loves his multiplayer clan play will go into a store and pickup MW2 to play in competition. It just isn't going to happen.

For this very reason, I'm now treating MW2 as a singleplayer game.

 

+1

 

Been playing it for a few hours now, very dissapointed, story seems cack and makes no sense, a cia guy with a gun standing next to the bad guy, why the hell cant I just shoot him? and there's no option screen at the start, wth?

 

Casual gamer and Guy who doesn't play MP review MW2, tonight at 11.

 

Adding emotion to this:-
Imagine how it'd feel to join a server. You're playing with a few mates and you're all having a ball. The cheater joins. He's splatting you left right and center. You can't stop it, turn a corner and you're dead. With no lean you can't even peek corners anymore, you just have to run around them...straight into his magic bullets.

What options do you have? You could use your custom ingame text chat to abuse the filthy one. Hope he gets offended and leaves or stops, but as we're all PC gamers with experience of real cheaters (unlike console tards) we know the only option is to vote kick / ban him...Oops. Wait a minute. You can't do that because it's a ranked game. In a ranked games, kicking players is a bad idea as the gameplay isn't balanced for it. Who knows what could happen.

Instead your only option, the player who is abiding by the rules, is to leave the server you've enjoyed playing on for the past 30 minutes. What sort of **** is that? Granted, it's caused by a cheater, but considering how popular the game is...That's gonna be a common issue.

Also, the way VAC works is in update waves. In CSS they'll let a number of hacks stay rampant for 2 weeks as they work on a counter (or something like that) then apply the patch over night to try and catch as many people in one lump as possible. This means "undetected" hacks spread like wildfire, get locked down, then a new anti-vac is out in a day or two. If they think VAC will stop cheaters, they should look at how VAC has been stopping cheaters in every other game that uses it...i.e. not very ****ing well.

Punkbuster isn't as "polished" as vac, but atleast it doesn't use specific definitions for specific hacks and instead uses a heuristic methods. Detecting common elements with in hacks and trying to define what it is. In theory this means less updating, which makes bypassing PB easier...but bypassing PB comes with hefty price if you get caught. If caught bypassing the PB function you will be hardware banned from any PB game. Obv you can spoof or just change a piece of hardware, but all you have to do with VAC is make a new free account then buy the game...

 

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense like pretty much most of the 'story'. But you sorta gotta check your skepticism at the door with games like these. Just have fun.

 

Back in my day, we had the option to vote ban.

 

I think it's disgusting that games such as MW2 refuse to tell the whole story.

It's all well and good sitting on a humvee and shooting stuff with a minigun, but what about the civilians. I'd like to see war from their perspective for a change. You know, hiding under a bed, that kind of thing.

 

lol

I saw on this highly reputable news site called "The Onion" that MW3 is going to feature ultra-realistic warfare invloving repairing humvees, driving supply trucks and sitting around waiting for orders. One can hope that MW4 will finally let the player take control of a terrified refugee and feature ultra-realistic 'fleeing' and 'hiding' missions.

 

Fine, go play the first five levels of Call of Cthulu and get more than your fair share of hiding and running. Unless you're suggesting you really want a one-level add-on for COD where you hide under a bed for ten minutes until the humvee goes by, then you get up and go fix your house?

 

Let's make a mashup game called Cthulu's Duty. Tentacled creatures chasing you through a desert environment and what not. Actually that sounds more like District 9: The Game.

 

Is Call of Cthulu set in war-torn Afghanistan too? I guess I could pretend anyway, even if it isn't.

And yes, that would be good. It would be even better if you could play a civilian and run around the maps during multiplayer games. Maybe they could assign the mouse buttons to terrified screaming and/or shouting "get out of my house" in Afghani.

 

Don't forget a co-op abu ghraib mission where you and a 5-10 other naked online players have to form a human pyramid and please the US prison guards just enough to avoid getting shot or mauled by dogs!

 

I was actually expecting a good review off the single player content (since its infinity ward), I was also expecting a good review out of the multiplayer part (Since I dont know, these are good developers, if they think they can boldy reinvent the multiplayer FPS [screaming blasphemy oout of alot of people] and sticking to their beliefs, then id give them a 10 for their guts), and I was also honestly expecting a large percentage of unhappy people because of the review on the multiplayer part, but the problem is alot of people are judging the multiplayer because there are no dedicated servers, not because of how for example; fruity the actual gameplay of the multiplayer is, i dont know its like bashing a game because it has mediocre graphics rather than letting the gameplay decide. yeah i know the flexibility of dedicated servers, but my reaction would be more like "nice multiplayer, would be better with a dedicated server though" and not "OMFG im not buying this game ever, it so etc etc etc" kinda reminds me of people in an MMO, too much QQ.

anyway your open to your own opinion though, I really dont care, I just want to buy and try the game even with its shortcommings ^^

 

Singler player is pretty good. Too short. Crap plot. SP will last you maybe 5 hours, so this game stands or falls on MP.

MP blows. No dedi. Too many hackers. No kick/ban ability. No mods. Laggy connections with hosts dropping out. Overpriced console pile of cack.

Overall 6/10 from me.

 

I just finished the single player and found it to be rather boring. Had it been say, released before MW1 or a few years back, it would excellent, but I've seen all of it before. It just felt repetitive and mundane.

The MP is pretty bad IMO. I've played CS:S competitively since it's release, and the lag is VERY noticeable. Even with full green bars (lol bars = ping, stupid console crap) it's still annoying. I'd agree with what a previous commenter wrote, about how the casual gamer isn't going to notice, but I'm fairly certain that most pc gamers who have been playing on dedicated servers are going to be pretty annoyed.

I've already uninstaled the game and have absolutely no desire to let it waste space on my HDD.